Tamara Jernigan

Tamara Jernigan

Tamara Jernigan was one of the thirteen astronauts selected by NASA in June 1985. Her flight history now stands at three missions: STS-40 in 1991, STS-52 in 1992 and STS-67 in 1995. In August 1985, she began a training and evaluation course intended to qualify her as a mission specialist on future Shuttle Crews. Jernigan was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but grew up in southern California and graduated from high school in Santa Fe Springs in 1977. She attended Stanford University receiving a B.S. in physics (with honors) in 1981 and an M.S. in engineering science in 1983. She also earned an M.S. in astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. While continuing her studies at Stanford and Berkeley from June 1981 until her selection as an astronaut, she worked for the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California. Her field of research was astrophysics and she pursued a Ph.D. at Berkeley in that area as well.